Two more years and it would’ve been able to buy us drinks!

Anime News Network announced today that the greatest comic being serialized today will finally be wrapping up in the issue of “Afternoon” shipping this December.  I speak, of course, of “Blade of the Immortal” which will be reaching its conclusion after nineteen years.  NINETEEN YEARS!  I know that other series have run for much longer, but after a certain point (probably the first decade of a title’s existence) you start to expect that it’s going to run forever at some point.  Now, this isn’t a problem if you’ve got a strong enough hook as “Golgo 13” can just keep plugging its main character into any current global hotspot, “Fables” has the entirety of public domain fairytale characters to work with, and “The Walking Dead” is dealing with nothing less than rebuilding civilization.

Then there are the titles where it looks like producing the series has become a “job” for the creator.  In the sense that they’re not working towards a definite endpoint but are just going to keep at it until the readers have had enough.  “Oh! My Goddess” comes readily to mind here.  It’s also not hard to see the most popular Shonen Jump titles operating under this logic, and I’m ecstatic that “Bakman” was just popular enough to allow its creators to end it on their own terms.  So rather than despair at “Blade’s” end, the news that Hiroaki Samura is steering his signature title to his own conclusion is reason to celebrate more than anything else.

Now if we can all just glare disapprovingly at Kentaro Miura long enough so that he’ll stop playing “Idolm@ster” long enough to get back to work on “Berserk.”